The "Mainstreaming" Experience: "Isolated cases"?

deafbajagal said:
I am 31 years old, and I still am haunted by my education experiences. Thinking about this topic brings a lump in my throat and a ball of burning pain forms in the pit of my stomach. I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or suppressing spits of anger.

I am a survivor of trauma. I have survived severe abuse from my father (emotional and physcial). I survived cancer - three times. Friends have died in my arms. I have lost babies. I survived a brutal attack by a group of men that nearly ended my life.

And yet those horrible, unspeakable experiences are merely shadows compared to being mainstreamed in a public school without appropriate services.
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Wow!

That is saying a heck of a lot. I sincerely hope people pay attention to this.

Sadly, I can relate.
 
shel90 said:
This is not about being bullied only. This is about being cut off from communicationa and information more than their hearing peers and then the bullies taking advantage of that.

I had bullies gang up on me telling that that our teacher said this or that knowing that I didnt have the same access to information as they did so I believed them and as a result, I got into trouble with my teachers.

That is what hearing people do NOT experience.
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+ 1 - That happened a lot with me too!
 
Kids, ages 12, 13,14, 15, 16, 17+ are coming to me with absolutely no language and very minimal communication skills. Schools say, "well, he had a hearing aid." Or parents say "I wanted her to have spoken English exposure." And countless of other stupid excuses. It is STILL happening. Right now. Today.
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And that doesn't surprise me one freaking iota! Yes there are resources and stuff, but unless you know how to get appropreate resources or whatever, it is VERY VERY easy to fall through the cracks.
You know.......the thing is......educators thought that the results from the private oral schools could be replicated in the mainstream (in oral programs) It is TOO easy for kids to fall through the cracks. And yes, I kind of agree with you. It is a little easier for parents to know about the dhh programs what with the net. But in order to access the system, you almost have to be a lawyer.
e ASL program integrated into a local school could be GREAT! Tho' it's come about bc the district has several deaf kids who don't have sufficient access to spoken language being forced to mainstream. (3 ASL-using little kids from a soon-to-close TC deaf school are being placed back in a local public school instead of at the bi-bi school my daughter attends that they'd hoped for). Could be a great program, time will tell, but scary for the family. They are kicking themselves for choosing the TC program, otherwise they'd be secure in their placement.
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Awwww man, that sucks that a TC program is shutting down :( Why? Budget cuts? But it's good that the local school district wants to start an ASL program. Maybe a good idea might be to suggest that they turn it into a magnent style program.....that would be awesome!
 
deafbajagal said:
I am 31 years old, and I still am haunted by my education experiences. Thinking about this topic brings a lump in my throat and a ball of burning pain forms in the pit of my stomach. I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or suppressing spits of anger.

I am a survivor of trauma. I have survived severe abuse from my father (emotional and physcial). I survived cancer - three times. Friends have died in my arms. I have lost babies. I survived a brutal attack by a group of men that nearly ended my life.

And yet those horrible, unspeakable experiences are merely shadows compared to being mainstreamed in a public school without appropriate services.
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I am really sorry that you had to go through all of that. I hope life treats you better from now on. You so deserve it!

As for feeling sick about discussion of mainstreaming and how some people take it lightly, I have the same knots of tension in my stomach.
 
I am 31 years old, and I still am haunted by my education experiences. Thinking about this topic brings a lump in my throat and a ball of burning pain forms in the pit of my stomach. I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or suppressing spits of anger.
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I could have written this. Whoever decided that solotairing it was the BEST placement for ALL dhh (oral and sign) clearly was BEYOND clueless about the social/emotional impact of it...especially in middle and high school. I STILL think that most pro mainstreamers are completely clueless or super naive when it comes to the downsides of solotairing.
 
TheOracle said:
How do you disagree? I said what you just said.
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Ok..will have to go back and reread the posts. Right now, I am just toooo mentally tired from my busy day to think rationally. It is time for me to go into the threads with lighter subjects. :)
 
deafdyke said:
I could have written this. Whoever decided that solotairing it was the BEST placement for ALL dhh (oral and sign) clearly was BEYOND clueless about the social/emotional impact of it...especially in middle and high school. I STILL think that most pro mainstreamers are completely clueless or super naive when it comes to the downsides of solotairing.
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Exactly. And when a deaf child has no or little means of EFFECTIVELY communicating, that means the child is literally isolated. You might as well as put him in a dark room all by himself. Isolation is abuse and neglect.
 
deafbajagal said:
I am 31 years old, and I still am haunted by my education experiences. Thinking about this topic brings a lump in my throat and a ball of burning pain forms in the pit of my stomach. I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or suppressing spits of anger.

I am a survivor of trauma. I have survived severe abuse from my father (emotional and physcial). I survived cancer - three times. Friends have died in my arms. I have lost babies. I survived a brutal attack by a group of men that nearly ended my life.

And yet those horrible, unspeakable experiences are merely shadows compared to being mainstreamed in a public school without appropriate services.
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You are absolutely right that there is nothing like being d/hh mainstreamed and completely oral with little to no support services. You struggle because you can't hear or understand what is being taught and your peers think you are stupid because you fail to understand the directions that everyone else has. Your parents think you are lazy because you failed to turn in a homework assignment that was given orally and you did not hear it was due the next day or you did not hear what the exact assignment was and was told to write it down yourself. I had one teacher in the 6th grade that more or less made me feel stupid on a daily basis. It was not later that I realized why I struggle so much with algebra was because of the way the multiplication tables were 'taught'. We were put in groups of 3 or 4 students and we had to literally teach each other these using a multiplication table sheet and we had to read them to each other and repeat them. This was in a noisy environment with other students speaking in the background and I struggled I really struggled. While everyone had learned theirs by Christmas, it was not until school was nearly finished for the academic year that I finally learned mine, then we had the 3 month summer break. I had forgotten most of them again by the time I started 4th grade. I was being tutored one-on-one for my college algebra course that the instructor told me I knew my algebra and operations I just did not have a good foundation. Looking back, now I know why. At 27, I'm still not good with it really.

I wish I had spoken up at this age but I was 9. How is a 9 year old supposed to stand up to adults that think they know what is best for the child when they are no where near experiencing what the child is?

As for my college coursework, I have learned to take adavantage of the instructor's office hours to speak with them one on one for clear explanation and clearing up of things I don't understand.

If I get to return to my studies at Uni full-time I will look into having an FM system or a note taker and possibly CART depending upon the course material. It would be nice if I could find a program I could install into my laptop that would turn speech into text right on my laptop in front of me but I believe this is rather expensive and who ever is speaking would need to be near a microphone that is linked in to the laptop.
 
shel90 said:
Ok..will have to go back and reread the posts. Right now, I am just toooo mentally tired from my busy day to think rationally. It is time for me to go into the threads with lighter subjects. :)
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*giggles* Obama's "fake" birth certificate is a pretty silly subject! :giggle:
 
I think another way that could help improve Deaf Ed, is by somehow changing the current funding system. About the ONLY reason why the local school even accepts kids with disabilties is b/c they bring a lot of money to the school district. If it weren't for that fact we would have a LOT of schools throwing up their hands and sending them to deaf or blind or schools for MR or even physically handicapped, like they did before PL 1974.
I think the parents (of MR kids) who sued the schools did it all wrong. They sued to get their kids into public schools, arguing that b/c they pay taxes their kids had the right to attend classes in public schools.
That is a good argument. But the thing is...they neglected to realize that public education is too one size fits all. What they should have done was sued for a continum of publicly funded placement options. Meaning regular classes with accomondations, BUT also specialized classes, and even specialized schools! I think a BIG part of the problem with the way the law was interpreted was that it was thought that ALL kids would benifit from a kneejerk mainstream placement. The first generation did do well. I will admit that. But that is b/c they had the advantage of specialized education. They did not go into mainstream schools unprepared.The simple fact of the matter is that the gross majority of mainstream schools do not have the resources and training to teach kids with low incidence disabilties!
I really think we need to have a policy of testing into mainstream ed for low incidence disabilties. I also think that we need to realize that although a lot of kids do decently in
elementary school, times have changed. High schools no longer really have a non academic track. It's basicly college prep. Not to mention that jr high and high schools have become fucking brutal!
 
Wirelessly posted

deafdyke said:
Bajagirl, check out this thread: http://www.alldeaf.com/deaf-education/57709-update-us.html
I really think Deaf Ed is in transistion right now.. and yes, in general Deaf School's scores are low....but kids in the mainstream do even worse. Remember the scores for DISABLED kids are low in the mainstream. That is always a group that scores low in general.
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actually, i was reading a study that compared the academic progress of kids in self contained classes vs. Deaf kids in the mainstream. It showed that kids in the mainstream were making more progress and were further along.

i can't post a link because i'm on my phone, but google "academic yearly progress deaf students" and you should find the whole article.
 
faire_jour said:
Wirelessly posted



actually, i was reading a study that compared the academic progress of kids in self contained classes vs. Deaf kids in the mainstream. It showed that kids in the mainstream were making more progress and were further along.

i can't post a link because i'm on my phone, but google "academic yearly progress deaf students" and you should find the whole article.
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I doubt that is credible either.

Allow me to explain why:

In my mainstreaming experience, I was the only one that turned out "ahead of my peers". (20ish.) Even after I went to the deaf school and them staying in the mainstream. OMGzErZ~~~!!!!!!!11 I should have been stunted....

I asked a friend about his mainstream experience, in his 5-6 different mainstream deaf programs, appx 40-50 kids... Only 4-6 are "smart" these days.

Not to mention, a deaf instituted friend interned at a mainstream school... and she had to teach high school seniors that were deaf the meaning of the English AND the signed word of improve. Ridiculous if you ask me.

So, find a report that uses EVERY deaf student in the mainstream as well, please.
 
posts from hell said:
I doubt that is credible either.

Allow me to explain why:

In my mainstreaming experience, I was the only one that turned out "ahead of my peers". (20ish.) Even after I went to the deaf school and them staying in the mainstream. OMGzErZ~~~!!!!!!!11 I should have been stunted....

I asked a friend about his mainstream experience, in his 5-6 different mainstream deaf programs, appx 40-50 kids... Only 4-6 are "smart" these days.

Not to mention, a deaf instituted friend interned at a mainstream school... and she had to teach high school seniors that were deaf the meaning of the English AND the signed word of improve. Ridiculous if you ask me.

So, find a report that uses EVERY deaf student in the mainstream as well, please.
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Matty, not everyone can be a genius. :cool: But seriously, none of this shit helps if we're not addressing early childhood education. I suspect fj may have a case (or not - I haven't seen the study) if her study uses kids who had ASL in early childhood. I don't know of anyone on AD that has had deaf ed K-12.

*frustrated* If I were advocating deaf ed, I'd stress ASL ASL ASL. I understand the arguments about deaf kids being with deaf peers, I do, and I don't discount it one bit. But there are parents who come to this site for help and deaf schools aren't always an option (or a good one). And not everyone has access to great parents, great schools, blablabla. fj is proof that not all deaf ed schools are alike. Some suck. Some public schools suck. And as long as we have local school boards, charters, private schools, unequal funding and state mandates, it will always be that way.

imho, the only reason why I "made it" despite my poor upbringing was my English skills. Without English, there is no science, no history, no art. Granted, I may have high verbal IQ, but it seems to me that great communicators seem to be the most successful.

fj and I aren't deaf. She has a deaf child and I study language. But I'd like to think that I can still be part of this discussion. :)

fj, hook us up with that study, please.

I'm writing a paper on this (thanks for the topic, guys) so I just took a new interest in this thread.

ps Does anyone know of any income disparities between deaf and hearing kids' parents? I'm thinking about things that could cause post-birth deafness an I wonder if lower income families are more likely to be affected.
 
A study about kids making academic progress.

Who cares?!!!!!

Many kids fare well academically in the mainstreamed more than the deaf school because the curriculum is watered down and instruction is so heavily modified that it barely resembles the original materials. And the deaf schools don't fare well because they don't usually accept kids who are on grade-level.

More importantly, we are expressing concerns of the overall well-being of children, especially emotional and mental health. I had a 4.0 gpa -with NO modifications whatsoever and I was reading above grade level- when I finally broke down and dropped out of school.

The mainstreamed education setting was cruel. Lonely. Painful. And my story isn't even unique. How many more were like me?
 
deafbajagal said:
A study about kids making academic progress.

Who cares?!!!!!

Many kids fare well academically in the mainstreamed more than the deaf school because the curriculum is watered down and instruction is so heavily modified that it barely resembles the original materials. And the deaf schools don't fare well because they don't usually accept kids who are on grade-level.

More importantly, we are expressing concerns of the overall well-being of children, especially emotional and mental health. I had a 4.0 gpa -with NO modifications whatsoever and I was reading above grade level- when I finally broke down and dropped out of school.

The mainstreamed education setting was cruel. Lonely. Painful. And my story isn't even unique. How many more were like me?
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It does matter. I'm not disregarding your childhood at all. We're talking about cognitive aptitude. If you don't have those basic building blocks, you're not going to get very far...happy childhood or no.

:/
 
Cognitive apitude and high academic scores are two different things.

There are plenty of kids who read below grade level but score extremely high on cognitive apitudes, especially if they are fluent in A.S.L.

I'm not going to to advocate child abuse for the sake of higher academic scores, which are based on false assessment data. No, thanks.
 
Okay, well, I'm sorry if you think mainstreaming is child abuse. Plenty of people in this thread are guilty then.
 
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